National Recognition

The hot start in St. Louis hasn’t gone overlooked in the region nor has it gone overlooked on a much broader spectrum. The nation has taken notice: watch out for the St. Louis Blues.

ESPNThe Blues ranked first in the ESPN NHL Power Rankings for the second consecutive week. Nice to see the Blues lead the way on such a list, but fans should definitely take most of ESPN’s coverage with a grain of salt. When it comes to hockey, ESPN does what it can, but unfortunately falls short where other sites succeed. Take fantasy hockey. ESPN’s rankings contained numerous retired skaters – some of which retired years ago. Things like that make it hard to give other areas of their NHL department much credit.

Yahoo! Puck Daddy
Our friend Greg Wyshynski offers five reasons why the St. Louis Blues are shocking the Western Conference. A solid read that mixes humor and fact which has always been the Puck Daddy way. However, I must make a case against point number one which states that the marketing/ticket sales are an extra motivator with the team’s pay half now/half when we clinch a playoff spot promotion. Obviously it is a motivator, but I need only direct you back to 2009-10 where the marketing department made the enormous mistake of basing their campaign/promotions around a trophy the team hadn’t won yet. Simply put, this isn’t the first time the marketing team has placed the team on the ice under a large amount of pressure.

TSN.ca
Another list and another number one ranking. Thanks to spectacular goaltending, the Blues have secured the top spot in TSN’s rankings as well. As much as I love to see the Blues getting recognition they deserve, part of me wishes the Blues could dodge the attention of the hockey world so that teams will not come gunning for them down the road. Of course there are also those that believe leading a list like this is sure to bring on a jinx, but I think it is just a result of more teams preparing harder for you when they see your name on the schedule.

USA Today
The Blues find themselves second on USA Today’s power rankings list, but plenty of praise falls on the shoulders of Jaroslav Halak – and deservedly so. Doug Armstrong humbly says it the best with, “He’s been what we expected.” Nice.

Versus
This goes beyond print, but doesn’t have much to do with the team’s hot start. Monday’s contest against the Colorado Avalanche will be a nationally televised game on Versus. This will be the first time this season that the Blues are on a national stage, and with all of these rankings being released, they have a lot to live up to. Thanks to hildymac for pointing this one out.

The word is out. Anyone that wasn’t paying attention to our boys in blue now are. Let’s hope we can live up to the growing hype.